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After years of waking up early to walk his dog, retiree Mike Edwards has finally found a corpse. The grim discovery, which he suspects will be the first of many, was made early yesterday morning when he noticed a hand sticking out from beneath some leaves.


‘I’ve been walking my dog through the woods every morning since I retired fifteen years ago’, said the 67-year-old. ‘Everybody knows that all dog walkers eventually find something like this, but I’ve not once found a mangled body or a skeleton. I’ve never even come across a discarded running shoe with the foot still inside. That all changed today; it’s terribly exciting’.


When pressed for details of the gruesome find, he explained: ‘It was textbook. My black labrador ran ahead and I lost sight of him, but then I found him sniffing around a pile of leaves and saw the hand poking out. I realised it was the body of an old woman. I phoned the police straightaway and waited for them to arrive. They put a tent around the body, and then a haggard looking world-weary cop turned up to take over and wind-up the forensics team’.


The Chief Superintendent in charge of the crime scene said: ‘We thank this old man for contacting us but we will not be talking to him from now on, and even though he discovered the body, he is not a suspect and you won’t be seeing him again’.


‘At the moment we have no idea who the dead woman is but assume that the discovery of the body will be the start of a long and complex investigation. We suspect that the motive for the murder will have its roots in something that happened decades ago, possibly in a children’s home.


He concluded: ‘We would ask anyone who may know the dead person to come forward so that we may suspect them of not giving us the full story before offloading in an emotional denouement, at which point we will probably agree that the dead woman had it coming. For now I’ve passed the investigation over to a shambolic, divorced, middle-aged functioning alcoholic who deals with this sort of thing every week’.

All competitors in the 2024 Olympics in Paris will need to perform some kind of wacky gesture to the camera as they are introduced to spectators just before they start their event, Olympic officials confirmed today.

The news comes after some of those competing at Tokyo 2020 opted for a generic smile to the camera and a slightly self-conscious wave as their name was announced to a global audience of billions.


'They've had five years to prepare their 'to-camera shot", said an Olympic spokesperson. 'So, it was disappointing to see some athletes insisting on a slightly scary fixed look of intense concentration, staring towards an imaginary point in the distance’.


'The Olympics has a long tradition of confident gestures to camera,’ noted the spokesperson wistfully. ‘We need to see more of those 'index finger pointing forward like a gun whilst nodding your head and winking' set pieces that were universal in the mens' 100m back in Los Angeles 1984, but which have sadly faded away. Or some of those ironic 'Rodin's thinker' type poses that some of the boxers do as they come in the ring’.


'Every single participant in the female gymnastics managed to make that heart gesture with their thumb and index fingers every time they were on camera, so I don't see why the track cyclists can't do it as they're lined up on a 45% banking', continued the spokesperson. 'The table tennis guys could do a little routine with their bat and ball, the sailors some kind of hornpipe pastiche. The dressage... we'll come back to you on that, but there must be something, maybe a little pretend gallop followed by someone getting quite angry and then throwing a punch’.


In separate news, it has been announced that 'medal biting' in post-podium photographs will also return to being a compulsory routine for winners in Paris 2024, after becoming just an optional gesture at Tokyo 2020 due to COVID.

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